DIANA  SOCIETY  OF  CHICAGO 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 


By 
MEREDITH  NICHOLSON 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  CO. 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright    191 1 
THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  Co. 


FOREWORD 

THE  following  pages  contain  the  notes  of 
an  address  which  I  have  delivered  on 
various  occasions.  Some  of  the  allusions 
and  criticisms  are  obviously  frivolous,  and 
others  were  introduced  merely  to  provoke 
discussion. 


2023873 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

\  T  the  word  style  the  critics  at  once 
*•  ^  sit  up  and  take  notice.  We  are  all 
sensitive  to  style;  we  either  like  to  drift  with 
an  easy,  lazy  current,  or  we  prefer  to  fight 
a  turbulent,  resisting  tide;  we  enjoy  con- 
templating the  moonlight  upon  tranquil 
waters,  or  we  find  our  greatest  pleasure  in 
watching  the  ruffian  billows  breaking 
against  rough  shores.  These  are  largely 
matters  of  temperament  or  of  mood.  The 
attitude  of  many  of  us  changes  from  day 
to  day,  from  book  to  book;  but  at  heart  we 
all  have  a  preference,  a  prejudice  in  favor 
of  certain  methods  of  writing,  while  others 
awake  our  antagonism.  It  has  probably 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

been  the  experience  of  all  of  us  that  books 
that  reach  the  library  table  often  lie  un- 
opened for  many  days ;  and  then  to  our  own 
surprise  we  some  day  take  them  up,  read 
them  with  delight,  and  wonder  why  we  ap- 
proached them  so  reluctantly.  In  the  same 
whimsical  fashion  we  recur  to  volumes  that 
we  knew  in  old  times,  impelled  by  some 
instinct  that  makes  us  long  to  experience 
the  same  emotion,  the  same  thrill,  the  same 
peace  that  gladdened  our  souls  in  happier 
days.  There  are  books  that  fit  into  moods 
of  sorrow,  of  loneliness,  of  anxiety;  and 
others  are  equally  identified  with  moods  of 
happiness,  elation  and  hope.  There  are  in 
all  our  libraries,  great  or  small,  stern  Gibral- 
tars  that  rise  gloomily  before  us  on  shelves 
to  which  we  never  turn  with  pleasure. 

Great  writers  have  rarely  written  of  style, 
perhaps  because  it  is  so  individual,  so  in- 
timate a  matter;  and  the  trick  of  the  thing 

2 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

may  not,  except  in  rare  cases  be  communi- 
cated to  the  tyro.  The  convenient  methods 
of  absent  treatment  advertised  by  corre- 
spondence schools  of  authorship  are  of  no 
avail  in  the  business  of  style;  style  can 
no  more  be  taught  than  the  shadows  of 
clouds  across  June  meadows,  or  the  play 
of  wind  over  wheat  fields  can  be  directed 
or  influenced  by  the  hand  of  man.  To 
grasp  style  much  is  inevitably  presupposed, 
— grammar,  sensibility,  taste,  a  feeling  for 
color  and  rhythm, — of  such  things  as  these 
is  the  kingdom  of  style.  In  children  we 
often  observe  an  individual  and  distinctive 
way  of  saying  things;  we  all  have  corre- 
spondents whose  letters  are  a  joy  because 
of  their  vivid  revelation  of  the  writer.  In 
every  community  there  are  persons  much 
quoted  for  their  wit  or  wisdom,  whose  say- 
ings have  a  raciness  and  tang. 

The  bulk  of  English  is  so  enormous  and 
3 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

increases  so  rapidly  that  we  have  a  right  to 
pick  and  choose  and  to  hang  aloof  from  all 
that  does  not  please  us.  The  fashion 
changes  in  literary  style  as  in  clothes,  and 
yet, — to  shift  the  figure, — the  snows  of 
yesteryear  linger  on  the  far  uplands  and 
high  peaks,  and  they  are  there  forever.  It 
is  a  common  impression  that  popular  taste 
in  literature  is  bad  and  growing  worse.  I 
do  not  myself  sympathize  with  this  idea. 
The  complaint  smells  of  antiquity:  every 
age  has  had  its  literary  Jeremiahs ;  the  wail 
that  of  making  many  books  there  is  no  end 
is  older  than  American  literature;  for  is  it 
not  written :  "Many  of  them  also  which  used 
curious  arts  brought  their  books  together 
and  burned  them  before  all  men;  and  they 
counted  the  price  of  them  and  found  it  fifty 
thousand  pieces  of  silver." 

It    would   be    instructive,    if    there   were 
time,  to  review  the  labors  of  those  who  have 
4 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

first  and  last  written  on  the  subject  of  style. 
We  might  with  profit  and  entertainment 
discuss  the  general  superiority  of  English 
poetry  to  English  prose;  but  this  is  a  matter 
conceded,  I  believe,  by  sounder  critics  than 
your  orator;  we  might  linger  by  the  golden 
coasts  of  Greece  and  harken  to  the  voice  of 
Plato  who — says  Frederic  Harrison,  alone 
is  faultless;  we  might  follow  Caesar's  eagles 
into  Roman  territory  and  hear,  at  the 
Sabine  farm,  Ars  Poetica  read  by,  a  most 
competent  witness  on  this  question  of  style. 
Here  is  a  man  to  our  liking,  this  Horace, 
and  wre  find  him  eminently  modern  in  his 
attitude  toward  the  dictionary:  "Mortal 
works  must  perish,"  he  says,  who  was  born 
two  thousand  years  ago;  "much  less  can 
the  honor  and  elegance  of  language  be  long- 
lived.  Many  words  shall  revive  which  now 
have  fallen  off:  and  many  words  which  are 
now  in  esteem  shall  fall  off,  if  it  be  the 
5 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

will  of  custom,  in  whose  power  is  the  de- 
cision and  right  and  standard  of  language." 
Other  witnesses  speaking  many  tongues 
crowd  the  door,  but  we  must  stick  to  our 
text.  It  is  our  mother  English  that  now 
concerns  us,  and  only  a  few  may  be  allowed 
to  testify  at  this  session  of  the  court.  You 
will  not,  I  pray,  take  my  obiter  dicta  too 
seriously.  I  beg  you  to  deal  leniently  with 
my  stupidity  when  I  say  that  such  prose 
as  Addison's  or  Steele's  has  little  charm  for 
me;  it  is,  as  Mr.  James  might  say,  nice; 
but  it  lacks  variety,  flash,  ginger;  and  if  I 
prefer  Swift,  Defoe  or  Carlyle  to  Milton, 
pray  do  not  deliver  me  to  the  lions.  As  an 
advocate  of  the  open  shop  in  criticism  I  insist 
on  my  right  to  punch  and  hammer  at  my 
own  bench  in  the  corner  beside  yours.  In 
thus  frankly  divulging  my  likings  and  aver- 
sions, I  hope — to  quote  Doctor  Johnson, 
that  "I  am  not  preparing  for  my  future  life 
6 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

either  shame  or  repentance."  Let  us  as- 
sume that  all  the  authoritative  testimony  on 
this  subject  is  in  evidence  and  a  part  of  the 
res  gestce, — Newman  on  Language  in  "The 
Idea  of  a  University";  Spencer's  "Philos- 
ophy of  Style";  certain  passages  from 
George  Henry  Lewes'  "Principles  of  Suc- 
cess in  Literature";  De  Quincey's  eloquent 
and  stimulating  essay  on  "Style";  and  dis- 
cussions of  the  same  fascinating  subject  by 
Stevenson,  Pater  and  Frederic  Harrison, 
and  by  Antoine  Albalat  in  French, — these 
we  file  with  the  clerk.  And  not  to  know 
Professor  Walter  Raleigh's  essay  on  Style 
is  to  have  missed  a  discussion  of  the  subject 
which  is  in  itelf  a  model  of  graceful,  melo- 
dious writing,  guiltless  of  preciosity. 

There   must   always   be   a   difference  be- 
tween the  style  of  genius  and  that  which 
proceeds   from  ordered,   controlled  and  di- 
rected talent.     The  dead  level  of  mediocrity 
7 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

is  easily  attained  in  both  prose  and  poetry, 
but  even  persons  of  little  cultivation  feel  the 
lure  of  captivating  speech.  The -world  has 
been  swayed  by  the  power  of  phrase.  The 
trumpet  and  drum  may  take  hold  of  man's 
emotions,  but  words  only  can  touch  his  mind 
with  truth.  The  words  of  Jesus  are  mar- 
velously  simple;  there  were  undoubtedly 
those  among  his  contemporaries  who  could 
contrive  more  splendid  orations;  there  were 
citizens  of  the  Roman  empire  of  which  he 
was  a  humble  citizen  who  were  richer  in 
learning. 

Antoine  Albalat,  in  "The  Travail  of 
Style,"  discusses  in  separate  chapters  the 
literary  methods  of  such  writers  of  su- 
preme rank  as  Pascal,  Bossuet,  Buffon, 
Montesquieu,  Rousseau,  La  Fontaine,  Ra- 
cine, Balzac,  Chateaubriand,  Victor  Hugo 
and  Flaubert.  And  he  conducts  this  discus- 
sion in  an  immensely  interesting  and  orig- 
8 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

inai  way,  namely,  by  reproducing  the  actual 
manuscripts  of  the  great  writers  themselves, 
with  the  countless  erasures  an<|  substitu- 
tions of  words,  phrases-  and  whole  passages 
they  made.  What  toilers,  what  galley 
slaves  of  the  pen,  they  were!  one  cries  in 
amazement!  The  first  draught  is  as  noth- 
ing. It  serves  simply  as  a  point  of  depar- 
ture, to  blot,  to  cover  with  spider  tracks  of 
erasures  and  emendations. 

"Is  this  the  work  of  inspiration,  this  gal- 
ley-slave toil  at  the  dull  mechanic  pen?"  de- 
mands a  critic.  **Yes,"  the  writer  of  the  book 
replies.  "When  Buffon  declared  /Genius  is 
but  infinite  capacity  of  patience/  do  you 
take  him  for  .a  fool  who  meant  to  say:  'If 
the  veriest  dolt  sits  long  enough  on  a  chalk 
egg  he  will  hatch  out  a  phoenix'?  No, 
he  meant  that  as  much  inspiration  of  genius 
goes  into  thoughtful  correction  and  brood- 
ing revision  as  into  the  first  jet  of  composi- 
9 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

tion.  When  the  now  more  fiery,  more 
pathetic  word  suggests  itself,  it  is  even 
more  a  flash  of  inspiration  than  the  primary 
suggestion  of  the  older  and  poorer  one." 
Ah !  if  ever  there  was  a  book  to  confirm  the 
current  saying,  "Easy  writing  makes  hard 
reading,"  it  is  this. 

There  is,  as  every  one  knows,  an  apparent 
happy  luck  in  writing, — the  curiosa  felicitas 
that  puts  the  inevitable  word  into  your  ink 
pot.  I  offer  the  suggestion  that  composi- 
tion does  not  begin  with  the  taking  up  of  the 
pen;  that  there  are  untraceable  sub-con- 
scious processes  that  are  never  idle,  whose 
results  illuminate  many  a  treasured  book. 
He  were  a  rash  author  who  would  attempt 
to  set  apart  his  conscious  felicities  from  his 
inadvertent  graces.  How  long  do  you  sup- 
pose Shakespeare  pondered  that  most  stu- 
pendous incident  in  all  literature — the 
knocking  at  the  gate  in  Macbeth?  Tenny- 
10 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

son  when  questioned  as  to  his  own  power 
over  words  once  solemnly  answered:  "In 
the  beginning  was  the  word,  and  the  word 
was  with  God  and  the  word  was  God" — 
implying  a  belief  in  inspiration. 

Veracity  is  the  final  test  in  all  art.  It 
makes  no  difference  how  trifling  or  unim- 
portant the  thing  that  we  would  utter,  or 
whether  we  express  ourselves  in  the  ca- 
dences of  the  symphony,  in  the  militant 
splendor  of  the  epic,  in  the  careless  fling 
of  some  vagrant  poet's  tavern  catch;  or 
whether  the  artist  writes  a  landscape  in  col- 
ors upon  canvas,  the  test  of  beauty  and 
strength  is  first  of  all  the  test  of  truth.  We 
measure  the  far-shadowing  spear  of  Achilles 
and  weigh  the  gleaming  sword  of  Arthur 
by  the  things  we  know  to  be  beautiful  and 
strong.  Words  may  lie  before  us  like  green 
meadows  by  peaceful  streams,  but  we  must 
feel  the  softness  of  the  turf  and  hear  the  bub- 
ii 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

ble  of  the  stream  or  they  fail  as  a  vehicle ;  or, 
in  other  departments  of  literature,  they  must 
sweep  toward  us  like  a  cavalry  charge,  and 
we  must  hear  the  rattle  of  scabbards  and 
the  pounding  of  hoofs  until  we  draw  back 
struck  with  fear  at  the  onset,  or  the  artist, 
who  is  like  a  captain  over  his  troop,  has 
failed  of  his  purpose.  "My  love  for  thee," 
wrote  the  poet;  "my  love  for  thee  shall 
march  like  armed  men." 

The  power  of  the  printed  word  has  al- 
ways been  tremendous;  the  authority  of 
type  is  often  excessive  and  unjustified;  yet 
this  only  makes  more  exacting  the  inevit- 
able standard  of  truth.  Style  will  forever 
be  challenged  by  truth,  that  austere  higher 
critic  whose  method  is  so  searching  and 
whose  judgments  are  so  inexorable.  The 
mere  bows  and  ruffles,  the  chiffon  flounces 
of  composition  are  easily  flung  off  by  the 
literary  milliner,  but  unless  they  are  essen- 
12 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

tial  to  the  investiture  of  character  they 
crumple  and  pass  to  the  garret.  It  is  not 
enough  to  communicate  to  the  eye  the  sense 
of  form,  the  outward  and  visible  outline  of 
a  man;  the  shop  keeper  can  do  that  with  a 
dummy  in  his  show-window;  but  words 
must  go  further  and  produce  bone  and 
sinew ;  we  must  be  able  through  the  writer's 
magic  to  clasp  a  hand  that  is  quick  with  red 
blood;  whose  contact  thrills  us  at  a  touch. 

This  is  as  true  in  those  characterizations 
that  are  the  veritable  creatures  of  realism 
as  of  those  that  are  wrought  in  the  mood  of 
romance.  The  burden  upon  your  romancer 
lies,  in  fact,  more  heavily,  for  in  his  work 
the  spectator,  the  auditor,  the  reader,  can 
assist  him  little.  Silas  Lapham,  for  ex- 
ample, is  within  the  range  of  our  common 
experience;  what  the  author  may  omit  we 
supply;  whereas  D'Artagnan  rides  in  from 
a  strange  and  unexplored  land,  and  we 
13 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

must  be  convinced  of  his  cleverness,  his 
courage,  his  skill  with  the  sword.  When 
Beatrix  comes  down  the  stair  to  meet 
Esmond  we  must  hear  the  rustle  of  her 
skirts,  feel  the  fascination  of  her  smile,  and 
be  won  by  the  charm  of  her  voice; — we 
must  hear  the  pretty  click  of  her  slippers 
on  the  stairs.  And  we  may  say,  in  passing, 
that  Thackeray  carried  style  as  an  element 
of  English  fiction  higher  than  it  was  ever 
carried  before  and  no  one  since  has  shaken 
his  supremacy. 

Few  writers  of  the  Victorian  period 
wielded  a  more  flexible  English  than  Mat- 
thew Arnold,  and  few  writers  of  any  period 
have  shown  greater  versatility.  His  power 
of  direct  statement  was  very  great  and  he 
plunged  forward  to  the  chief  facts  he  wished 
to  present  with  the  true  journalist's  instinct 
for  what  is  interesting  and  important.  As 
a  controversial  writer  he  had  few  equals  in 
14 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

his  day,  and  many  philistines  went  down  be- 
fore his  lance.  The  force  of  repetition  was 
never  more  effectively  illustrated  than  in  the 
letters  he  launched  against  his  assailants. 
He  was  a  master  of  irony,  and  irony  in 
skilled  hands  is  a  terrible  weapon. 

The  vivacious  Mr.  Birrell  complains  of  the 
jauntiness  of  Arnold's  style  in  "Literature 
and  Dogma,"  and  we  must  confess  that 
Arnold  pinned  his  tick-tack  on  the  palace 
windows  of  the  bishops  of  Gloucester  and 
Winchester  rather  too  often.  But  Arnold 
had,  too,  the  touch  of  grace  and  melody. 
He  was  a  master  of  the  mournful  cadence, 
as  witness  the  familiar  and  oft  quoted  para- 
graph on  Newman  at  Saint  Mary's  with 
which  he  opens  his  lecture  on  Emerson; 
and  even  more  beautiful  is  that  passage  in 
one  of  the  most  appealing  and  charming  of 
his  literary  essays — the  paper  on  Keats — in 
which  he  thus  plays  upon  Keats'  own  words : 
15 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

"By  virtue  of  his  feeling  for  beauty  and  of 
his  perception  of  the  vital  connection  of 
beauty  with  truth,  Keats  accomplished  so 
much  in  poetry,  than  in  one  of  the  two  great 
modes  by  which  poetry  interprets,  in  the 
faculty  of  naturalistic  interpretation,  in 
what  we  call  natural  magic,  he  ranks  with 
Shakespeare.  'The  tongue  of  Kean,'  he 
says,  in  an  admirable  criticism  of  that  great 
actor  and  his  enchanting  elocution;  'the 
tongue  of  Kean  must  seem  to  have  robbed 
the;  Hybla  bees  and  left  them  honeyless. 
There  is  an  indescribable  gusto  in  his  voice; 
— in  Richard,  "Be  stirring  with  the  lark  to- 
morrow, gentle  Norfolk!"  comes  from  him 
as  through  the  morning  atmosphere  towards 
which  he  yearns/  This  magic,"  says 
Arnold,  "this  'indescribable  gusto  in  the 
voice/  Keats  himself,  too,  exhibits  in  his 
poetic  expression.  No  one  else  in  English 
poetry,  save  Shakespeare,  has  in  expression 
16 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

quite  the  fascinating  felicity  of  Keats,  his 
perfection  of  loveliness.  'I  think,'  he  said 
humbly,  'I  shall  be  among  the  English  poets 
after  my  death/  He  is;  he  is  with  Shake- 
speare." 

The  great  distinction  of  Newman's  style 
lies  in  its  extraordinary  clarity.  He  wrote 
for  a  select  audience;  his  sermons  even  were 
for  the  scholars  of  his  university,  and  dealt 
usually  with  the  fine  points  of  religious 
philosophy.  He  was  under  scrutiny,  the  chief 
spokesman  of  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
movements  that  ever  shook  the  Protestant 
world,  and  of  necessity  he  expressed  him- 
self with  scrupulous  precision.  After  crys- 
tal clearness  a  certain  cloistral  composure 
follows  naturally  as  a  second  characteristic 
of  his  style.  He  \vas  engaged  upon  a  se- 
rious business  and  never  trifled  with  it.  It 
is  unfortunate  for  literature  that  he  confined 
himself  so  closely  to  theological  controversy 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

or  to  kindred  subjects  that  have  lost  their 
hold  on  popular  interest,  for  in  the  qualities 
indicated — clearness  and  precision,  and  in 
melody — he  is  rarely  equaled  in  the  whole 
range  of  English  prose.  Religion  in  his 
case  was  not  a  matter  of  emotion  but  of  in- 
tellect. Personal  feeling  flashes  out  so 
rarely  in  his  pages  that  we  hover  with  at- 
tention over  those  few  lines  in  which  he 
tells  us  of  his  good-by  to  Oxford,  and  of  his 
farewell  to  Trinity  College:  "Trinity, 
which  was  so  dear  to  me,  and  which  held 
on  its  foundation  so  many  who  had  been 
kind  to  me  both  when  I  was  a  boy,  and  all 
through  my  Oxford  life.  Trinity  had  never 
been  unkind  to  me.  There  used  to  be  much 
snap-dragon  growing  on  the  walls  opposite 
my  freshman's  rooms  there,  and  I  had  for 
years  taken  it  as  the  emblem  of  my  own 
perpetual  residence  even  unto  death  in  my 
University." 

18 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

But  there  for  a  moment  he  was  off  guard : 
and  for  an  instance  of  his  more  character- 
istic manner — for  an  example  of  that  mourn- 
ful music  which  Arnold,  in  the  familiar 
paragraph  to  which  I  have  referred,  caught 
so  happily, — we  do  better  to  dip  into  such 
a  sermon  as  the  famous  one  on  The  Theory 
of  Development,  and  I  read  from  the  page 
as  it  falls  open: 

"Critical  disquisitions  are  often  written 
about  the  idea  which  this  or  that  poet  might 
have  in  his  mind  in  certain  of  his  composi- 
tions and  characters;  and  we  call  such 
analysis  the  philosophy  of  poetry,  not  im- 
plying thereby  of  necessity  that  the  author 
wrote  upon  such  a  theory  in  his  actual  de- 
lineation, or  knew  what  he  was  doing;  but 
that,  in  matter  of  fact,  he  was  possessed, 
ruled,  guided  by  an  unconscious  idea. 
Moreover,  it  is  a  question  whether  that 
strange  and  painful  feeling  of  unreality 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

which  religious  men  experience  from  time 
to  time,  when  nothing  seems  true,  or  good, 
or  right,  or  profitable,  when  faith  seems  a 
name,  and  duty  a  mockery,  and  all  endeavors 
to  do  right,  absurd  and  hopeless,  and  all 
things  forlorn  and  dreary,  as  if  religion 
were  wiped  out  from  the  world,  may  not 
be  the  direct  effect  of  the  temporary  obscu- 
ration of  some  master  vision,  which  uncon- 
sciously supplies  the  mind  with  spiritual  life 
and  peace." 

Here  in  America  style  was  first  greatly 
realized  by  Hawthorne.  Changing  tastes 
and  fashions  have  not  shaken  his  position. 
He  was  our  first,  and  he  remains  our  great- 
est creative  artist  in  fiction,  and  it  were  idle 
to  dispute  his  position.  His  work  became 
classic  almost  in  his  own  day.  He  was  no 
chance  adventurer  upon  the  sea  of  litera- 
ture, but  a  deliberate,  painstaking  artist. 
Fiction  has  rarely  been  served  by  so  noble 
20 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

a  spirit ;  and  fortunate  were  we  indeed  could 
we  pluck  the  secret  of  style  from  his  pages. 
In  his  narrative  there  may  sometimes  be  dull 
passages;  his  instinct  for  form  and  propor- 
tion may  seem  at  times,  by  our  later  tastes, 
to  fail  him;  but  his  command  of  the  lan- 
guage is  never  lost;  his  apt  choice  of  words 
moves  an  imitator  to  despair;  and  felicity 
of  phrase,  balance,  movement  and  color 
were  greatly  hfs.  The  cumulative  power  of 
"The  Scarlet  Letter"  is  tremendous, — and  it 
is  a  power  of  style  not  less  than  of  intense 
moral  earnestness.  There  is  something 
awe-inspiring  in  the  contemplation  of  that 
melancholy  figure,  in  whose  mind  and  heart 
the  spirit  of  Puritanism  dwelt  as  in  a  sanc- 
tuary; and  yet  he  was  always  and  above 
everything  else  an  artist.  .  He  was  as  inca- 
pable of  an  inartistic  idea  as  he  was  of  a 
clumsy  sentence.  Sitting  at  the  receipt  of 
custom  in  the  grim  little  village  of  Salem 
21 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

he  took  toll  of  stranger  ships  than  ever 
touched  Salem  wharves.  Other  figures  in 
American  literature  must  be  scrutinized 
through  the  magnifying  glass;  Hawthorne 
alone  looms  huge; — as  Mr.  James  so  hap- 
pily said  of  Balzac,  Hawthorne's  figure  is 
immovable  and  fixed  for  all  time.  To  men- 
tion Irving,  Poe  or  Cooper  on  the  same  page 
is  but  to  betray  our  incompetence  for  the 
office  of  criticism.  There  are  kindlier  and 
cheerfuller  figures  among  American  prose 
writers,  but  Hawthorne  alone  is  command- 
ing, noble,  august. 

After  Hawthorne,  the  prose  of  Lowell  af- 
fords, I  should  say,  the  highest  mark  reached 
by  any  American  writer.  The  main  differ- 
ence,— and  it  is  a  difference  of  height, 
breadth,  depth, — the  difference  between  them 
as  prose  writers  lies  in  the  fact  that  one  was 
a  creative  artist  and  the  other  a  critic.  And 
criticism  must  always  be  secondary.  The 
22 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

enduring  monuments  of  the  literature  of  all 
the  ages  were  built  before  criticism  was 
born.  The  great  originals  in  all  literature 
have  paid  little  heed  to  criticism.  The  cre- 
ator must  plow  and  sow  and  reap;  the  critic 
may  only  seek  the  garnered  harvest,  nibble 
the  hay  and  chew  his  cud.  The  persistent 
efforts  of  critics  to  magnify  their  own  im- 
portance proves  their  sensitiveness  and  the 
jealousy  with  which  they  guard  their  self- 
conferred  prerogatives.  The  criticism  of 
literature  is  the  only  business  in  which  the 
witness  is  not  called  upon  to  qualify  as  to 
his  competency.  Failures  at  any  game  nat- 
urally turn  critic.  In  science  we  demand 
the  critic's  credentials:  in  literature  we  all 
kick  the  sleeping  lion  and  inadvertently  twist 
his  tail. 

Lowell  wrote  with  remarkable  knowledge, 
skill  and  effectiveness  on  many  subjects,  and 
his  political  and  literary  essays  are  models 
23 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

of  form  and  diction.  He  was  perhaps  the 
most  cultivated  man  we  have  produced;  he 
drew  from  all  literatures,  and  not  less 
from  human  experience;  and  he  was  singu- 
lar among  American  scholars  in  his  life-long 
attention  to  politics.  He  saw  American  his- 
tory in  the  making  through  years  of  great 
civil  and  military  stress.  He  was  one  of  the 
first  to  take  the  true  measure  of  Lincoln. 
He  wrote  a  magnificent  prose  essay  on  Lin- 
coln before  our  martyred  chief  passed  to  the 
shadows;  and  the  postscript  to  that  essay 
touches,  it  seems  to  me,  the  higher  altitudes 
possible  in  prose,  and  deserves  to  be  remem- 
bered and  repeated  side  by  side  with  his  Com- 
memoration Ode: 

"On  the  day  of  his  death'  this  simple 
Western  attorney,  who,  according  to  one 
party  was  a  vulgar  joker,  and  whom  the  doc- 
trinaires among  his  own  supporters  accused 
of  wanting  every  element  of  statesmanship, 
24 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

was  the  most  absolute  ruler  in  Christendom, 
and  this  solely  by  the  hold  his  good-humored 
sagacity  had  laid  on  the  hearts  and  under- 
standings of  his  countrymen.  Xor  was  this 
all,  for  it  appeared  that  he  had  drawn  the 
great  majority,  not  only  of  his  fellow-citi- 
zens, but  of  mankind  also,  to  his  side.  So 
strong  and  so  persuasive  is  honest  manliness 
without  a  single  quality  of  romance  or  un- 
real sentiment  to  help  it !  A  civilian  during 
times  of  the  most  captivating  military 
achievement;  awkward,  with  no  skill  in  the 
lower  technicalities  of  manners,  he  left  be- 
hind him  a  fame  beyond  that  of  any  con- 
queror, the  memory  of  a  grace  higher  than 
that  of  outward  person,  and  of  a  gentleman- 
liness  deeper  than  mere  breeding.  Never 
before  that  startled  April  morning  did  such 
multitude  of  men  shed  tears  for  the  death 
of  one  they  had  never  seen,  as  if  with  him 
a  friendly  presence  had  been  taken  away 
25 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

from  their  lives,  leaving  them  colder  and 
darker.  Never  was  funeral  panegyric  so 
eloquent  as  the  silent  look  of  sympathy  which 
strangers  exchanged  when  they  met  on  that 
day.  Their  common  manhood  had  lost  a 
kinsman." 

Lowell's  prose  like  his  verse  was  enriched 
from  the  soil  of  many  lands,  but  more  and 
more  as  he  grew  older  he  wore  his  learning 
lightly.  The  self-consciousness  of  the 
young  professor,  ever  anxious  not  to  be 
tripped  by  the  impertinence  of  some  re- 
calcitrant student,  gave  way  toward  the  end 
to  the  easy  discourse  of  a  man  sure  of  his 
ground.  A  certain  tendency  to  superficial 
cleverness, — the  stinging  ironies  of  a  yawn- 
ing professor  with  a  dull  class  flash  out  of 
his  pages  disagreeably  at  times,  in  odd  con- 
trast with  his  true  and  always  delightful 
humor.  Style  must  proceed  from  something 
solider  than  mere  cleverness.  Your  tour  de 
26 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

force  performer  is  lucky  to  be  remembered 
in  a  book  of  quotations;  his  definitive  edi- 
tion goes  to  the  back  shelf  of  the  second- 
hand shop.  Language  with  Lowell  was  a 
ready  and  flexible  instrument.  I  have  said 
that  he  knew  men  and  books;  he  knew  na- 
ture also,  and  he  observed  the  passing- 
pageant  of  his  New  England  seasons  with 
a  shrewd  and  contemplative  eye.  The 
spring  sunshine  touching  the  old  historic 
trees  at  Elmwood;  the  flashing  gold  of  the 
oriole,  the  spendthrift  glory  of  June  days, 
— these  things  communicated  an  imperish- 
able sunniness  and  charm  to  his  writings. 
How  happily,  in  one  of  the  best  of  his 
papers — the  essay  on  Walton — he  has  con- 
structed for  us  the  character  of  the  delight- 
ful old  angler.  Walton,  he  darkly  hints,  is 
not  the  artless  old  customer  we  have  always 
believed  him ;  and  you  may  be  sure  that  only 
a  lover  of  letters  and  a  believer  in  style  for 
27 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

the  style's  sake  would  chuckle — as  we  find 
Lowell  doing, — at  seeing  the  angler  hesi- 
tating between  two  or  three  forms  of  a 
sentence,  solicitous  to  preserve  only  the  best. 
In  his  charming  life  of  Herbert,  after  quot- 
ing a  poem  of  Donne's,  Walton  adds  a  few 
words  of  characteristic  comment.  They 
wear  a  naive  air;  they  seem  to  have  slipped 
carelessly  from  the  pen.  Walton  wrote: 
"These  hymns  are  now  lost  to  us,  but  doubt- 
less they  were-  such  as  they  two  now  sing  in 
Heaven."  "Now" — continues  Lowell — "on 
the  inside  cover  of  his  Eusebius,  Walton  has 
written  three  attempts  at  this  sentence,  each 
of  them  very  far  from  the  concise  beauty  to 
which  he  at  last  constrained  himself.  Sim- 
plicity, when  it  is  not  a  careless  gift  of  the 
Muse,  is  the  last  and  most  painful  achieve- 
ment of  conscientious  self-denial." 

By  the  usual  tests  of  style  we  might  easily 
deal   harshly    with    Emerson;    but    nothing 
28 


STYLE  AND  THE  "MAN 

could  be  idler  than  any  attempt  to  buckram 
ourselves  in  the  rules  of  the  schoolroom  in 
studying  the  qualities  that  make  for  style. 
Emerson's  diction  was  happily  adapted  to 
the  needs  of  his  matter.  His  essays  are  like 
the  headings  for  homely  lectures  or  jottings 
from  notebooks,  and  are  almost  as  good 
reading  when  taken  backward  as  forward, 
so  little  was  he  concerned  with  sequence  or 
climax. 

The  roaring,  steaming  style  of  his  grim 
old  friend  Carlyle  never  wakened  any  de- 
sire for  emulation  in  the  sage  of  Concord. 
Carlyle  drives  or  drags  you  under  the  hot 
sun  of  mid-day,  and  if  you  falter  or  stumble 
he  lays  on  the  lash  with  a  hard,  bony  Scotch 
hand.  He  was  what  Sydney  Smith  called 
Daniel  Webster — a  steam  engine  in  trou- 
sers ;  but  Emerson  addresses  you  with  a  fine 
air  of  casualty  when  he  meets  you  in  the 
highway;  and  if  the  day  be  fine,  and  if  you 
29 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

are  in  the  mood  for  loitering,  he  will  repeat 
to  you  the  Socratic  memoranda  from  his 
notebook.  He  is  benignant,  sanguine,  wise, 
albeit  a  trifle  cold  with  the  chill  of  winter's 
last  fling  at  the  New  England  landscape. 
His  usual  essay  reminds  me  of  a  string  of 
icicles  on  the  eaves  of  a  white,  staring  New 
England  house,  aglitter  but  not  yet  adrip 
in  the  March  sun.  He  is  as  careless  of 
your  attention  as  Walt  Whitman  when  the 
good  gray  poet  copies  the  names  of  "these 
states"  from  a  geographical  index.  In  spite 
of  his  fondness  for  references  to  the  ancients 
he  suggests  Plato  and  Socrates  far  less  than 
Poor  Richard  or  Abe  Martin.  He  con- 
trived no  new  philosophy  but  he  was  a  mas- 
ter-hand at  labeling  guideposts  on  the  dusty 
highway  of  life.  He  could  not  build  a 
bridge  to  carry  us  across  the  stream,  but  he 
could  paint  a  sign — "no  thoroughfare"  or 
"A  fine  of  ten  dollars  for  driving  faster  than 
30 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

a  walk" :  and  happy  is  the  youth  who  heeds 
these  amiable  warnings.  Proverbs  fell  as 
naturally  to  his  pen  as  codfish  balls  to  his 
Sunday  morning  breakfast.  He  is  as 
wholesome  as  whole  wheat  bread ;  but  he  has 
a  frugal  method  with  the  bread-knife  and 
the  slices  at  his  table  are  thin. 

The  more  genial  Lowell  produces  a  cob- 
webbed  bottle  from  his  cellar  and  takes  care 
to  push  it  to  your  plate;  he  plies  you  with 
cakes  spiced  from  far  lands,  and  rises  anon 
to  kick  the  logs  upon  the  hearth  into  leaping 
flame  that  the  room  may  be  fittingly  dressed 
for  cheering  talk.  Emerson  patronizes  you 
and  advises  a  sparing  draught  from  the 
austere-lipped  pitcher  of  icy  spring  water. 
At  seventeen  (I  give  you  my  personal  ex- 
perience for  what  it  may  be  wTorth),  there  is 
something  tonic  in  the  very  austerity  of  his 
style, — his  far-flung  pickets  that  guard  the 
frosty  hills.  Later  on,  when  the  fires  of 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

youth  have  cooled  somewhat,  and  we  march 
beside  the  veterans  in  the  grand  army; — 
when  proverbs  have  lost  their  potency  and 
the  haversacks  hang  empty  on  our  lean  and 
weary  backs,  we  prefer,  for  the  campfires, 
authors  of  more  red  blood,  and  pass  our  bat- 
tered cups  for  literary  applejack  that  is  none 
the  worse  for  us  if  it  tear  our  throats  a  little 
as  it  gurgles  down.  Once  he  might  throw 
up  his  windows  and  call  to  us:  Virtue  is 
the  soul's  best  aim;  adjust  your  lives  to 
truth;  and  so  on.  But  now  that  we  have 
tasted  battle  and  known  shipwreck,  we  pre- 
sent arms  only  to  the  hardier  adjutants  of 
the  army  of  life  who  gallop  by  on  worn 
chargers  and  cry:  "Courage,  Comrade,  the 
devil's  dead." 

Eloquence  of  the  truest  and  finest  sort  we 

find  in  Ruskin  at  his  happiest.     He  could 

be  as  wayward  and  as  provoking  as  Carlyle ; 

but  he  founded  a  great  apostolic  line  of  teach- 

32 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

ers  of  beauty,  and  when  he  was  most  abusive 
he  was  at  least  interesting,  and  when  he 
was  possessed,  as  so  often  happened,  by  the 
spirit  of  lovely  things,  and  color  and  form 
and  light  wove  their  spell  for  him  and  he 
wrought  in  an  abandon  of  ecstasy,  we  are 
aware  of  eloquence  in  its  truest  sense  and 
see  style  rising  to  its  noblest  possibilities. 
His  tremendous  earnestness,  his  zeal,  his 
pictorial  phraseology,  the  glow  of  language 
struck  off  at  heat, — these  are  things  that 
move  us  greatly  in  Ruskin.  In  his  armory 
he  assembled  a  variety  of  weapons  suitable 
for  various  uses;  he  could  administer  mild 
rebuke;  he  could  expostulate  a  little  strid- 
ently; he  could  deliver  us  up  to  prison  and 
slam  the  door  of  a  mediaeval  dungeon  upon 
us;  whereas  the  sour  old  Scot  used  one 
bloody  bludgeon  for  all  heads.  Carlyle 
was,  to  be  sure,  capable  of  tenderness — there 
were,  indeed,  few  feats  possible  in  the  literary 
33 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

gymnasium  that  he  could  not  accomplish; 
but  when  Jeannie  got  on  his  nerves  there 
was  something  doing  in  the  Recording 
Angel's  office.  Keble,  he  declared,  was  an 
ape,  and  Newman  was  without  the  brains 
of  a  rabbit.  He  praised  as  violently  as  he 
denounced; — everything  was  pitched  in 
thundering  hyperbole.  The  great  men  of 
the  ages  slunk  through  Carlyle's  study  like 
frightened  steers  through  a  slaughter  house. 
Where  he  hid  his  own  iniquities  during  his 
life  time  the  genial  Froude  exposed  them  in 
a  new  chamber  of  horrors  at  his  death. 

Macaulay  always  reminds  me  of  a  gentle- 
man whip  driving  a  coach  and  four.  He 
manages  his  horses  with  a  sure  hand.  His 
speed  is  never  too  high;  he  knows  the 
smooth  roads  and  rumbles  along  at  a  com- 
fortable gallop,  swinging  up  to  tavern  doors 
with  grand  climaxes.  He  writes  as  a  man 
writes  who  dines  well  and  feels  good;  he 
34 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

piles  up  a  few  pages  of  manuscript  after  the 
supper  gong  has  sounded  just  to  show  that 
his  head  is  still  full  after  his  stomach  is 
empty.  He  can  turn  his  horses  in  the  chan- 
cel of  a  cathedral  without  knocking  out  a 
single  choir  stall;  he  can  drive  under  low 
arches  without  ruffling  his  hat;  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  road  is  complete;  his  confidence 
reassuring.  As  you  roll  over  the  road  with 
the  whip  lash  curling  and  cracking  and  the 
horn  blowing  blithely  you  submit  yourself 
to  his  guidance  with  supreme  faith  that  he 
will  never  spill  you  into  the  ditch  or  send 
you  crashing  into  a  fence  corner.  Eng- 
lish history  unfolds  before  him  like  a  charm- 
ing panorama.  We  smile  but  are  not 
convinced  by  that  reference  of  Dr.  Holmes 
to  the  Macaulay  flowers  of  literature.  You 
are  proud  of  yourself  to  be  reading  anything 
so  wholly  agreeable  and  apparently  so  wise. 
The  later  scientific  method  of  historical 
35 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

writing  can  not  harden  our  hearts  to- 
ward Macaulay.  A  man  whose  pen  never 
scratched  or  squeaked  is  not  to  be  set  aside 
for  a  spectacled  professor  in  a  moldy  library. 
His  facts  may  be  misleading  but — he's  per- 
fectly bully  reading! 

It  is  difficult  to  speak  of  Stevenson,  for  he 
has  been  so  much  cited,  and  his  admirers 
praise  him  with  so  much  exuberance  that 
many  are  on  guard  against  what  is  called 
his  charm.  He  has  undoubtedly  been 
praised  by  some  who  liked  his  velvet  coat 
better  than  his  writings;  and  yet  when  we 
have  dismissed  these  triflers  and  have  locked 
away  the  velvet  jacket  we  must  admit  that 
the  applause  of  the  tavern  idlers  is  not  with- 
out reason.  We  have  to  do  now  only  with 
his  style, — the  style  that  is  indubitably  there. 
It  not  only  exists,  but  there  is  an  eerie,  Iur7 
ing,  Ariel-like  quality  about  it  that  can  not 
readily  be  shaken  off.  He  has  told  us  with 

36 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

a  frankness  rarely  equaled  by  men  of  letters 
of  the  methods  he  employed  in  learning  to 
write:  his  confessions  have  been  quoted  ad 
nauseam, — I  refer  to  those  paragraphs  in 
which  he  tells  us  how  he  played  the  sedulous 
ape  to  many  accepted  masters  of  style  in  the 
hope  of  catching  their  tricks. 

The  gods  of  his  youth  were  certainly  re- 
spectable,— Hazlitt,  Lamb,  Wordsworth,  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  Defoe,  Hawthorne,  Mon- 
taigne and  Obermann.  He  not  only  con- 
fesses that  he  aped  these  models ;  he  defends 
the  method :  "Nor  yet,"  he  says,  "if  you  are 
born  original,  is  there  anything  in  this  train- 
ing that  shall  clip  the  wings  of  your  orig- 
inality." 

Stevenson  liked  a  good  phrase  just  as  he 
liked  a  good  inn,  or  winter  stars  or  a  long 
white  road.  A  zest  for  life, — for  the  day's 
adventure,  for  the  possibilities  of  the  next 
turn  of  the  highway,  for  a  pungent  saying 
37 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

that  might  fall  from  the  lips  of  a  passing 
beggar, — such  things  as  these  interested 
him,  and  he  accommodated  his  style  to  the 
business  of  setting  them  forth  in  melodious 
language.  He  realized  in  a  fine  way  that 
which  we  heavily  call  the  light  touch, — a 
touch  firm  in  its  lightness  and  instinct  with 
nimbleness  and  grace.  We  should  know 
from  his  writings,  if  he  had  not  been  de- 
scribed with  so  much  particularity,  that  he 
wras  a  person  of  keen  humor  and  delightful 
vivacity.  Everything  that  may  be  done  with 
the  light  touch  he  did  and  did  well.  He 
renewed  our  interest  in  the  essay;  he  wrote 
poems  marked  by  a  shy  but  bubbling  joy  in 
simple  things ;  he  mounted  the  fallen  lord  of 
romance  upon  a  fresh  charger  and  sent 
pirate  caravels  forth  again  to  plunder  the 
seas.  And  as  he  sails  the  wide  waters  of 
romance  under  flags  not  down  in  the  signal 
books,  we  may  be  quite  sure  that  every  bit 

38 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

of  brass  is  polished  to  the  utmost,  that  every 
rope  is  in  place  and  neatly  coiled  and  every 
sail  furled  tightly  in  the  nattiest  manner  or 
bent  to  catch  the  gale.  Those  cheerless 
souls  who  never  heard  a  whip  handle  rattle 
a  tavern  shutter  at  midnight,  who  never 
prowled  about  old  wharves  and  talked  with 
tattooed  sailormen;  who  are  grim  seekers 
after  realities  and  have  no  eye  for  the  light 
that  never  was  on  sea  or  land  have  no  busi- 
ness with  Stevenson  and  had  better  stick  to 
tea,  muffins  and  The  Ladies'  Home  Journal. 
And  finally — for  we  must  hurry  on  lest  we 
fall  under  that  spell  of  his,  let  me  say  that 
the  sense  of  form  and  the  instinctive  blend- 
ing of  word  colors, — things  of  no  light  im- 
portance in  consideration  of  style,  have  not 
in  our  time  been  better  exemplified  than  in 
the  writings  of  Stevenson. 

You  will  observe  that  I  have  been  calling 
the  roll  of  names  near  to  our  own  genera- 
39 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

tion,  for  these  we  may  bring  to  a  more 
intimate  scrutiny;  and  I  am  not  among 
those  who  are  confident  that  the  last  word 
was  said  in  English  style  before  the  Vic- 
torian era.  The  nervous  energy  of  our 
later  English  comes  naturally  with  the 
quicker  currents  of  life.  Milton,  himself,  if 
he  might  reappear  from  the  shadows,  would 
be  sure  to  delatinize  his  speech,  and  accom- 
modate his  manner,  in  all  likelihood,  to  the 
requirements  of  less  monstrous  subjects  than 
those  offered  by  the  decadent  years  in  Eng- 
lish history  which  saw  the  blackguard 
roundheads  sticking  their  bloody  spears 
through  cathedral  windows. 

The  style  of  Mr.  Henry  James  is  much 
discussed,  frequently  execrated  and  often 
deplored;  and  even  in  a  hasty  glance  like 
ours  over  the  bookshelves  we  must  linger  a 
moment  beside  his  long  line  of  volumes. 
Whether  we  admire  or  dislike  him  he  is  not 
40 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

a  negligible  figure  in  contemporaneous  liter- 
ature. He  is  one  of  the  most  interesting 
writers  of  his  time;  he  has  uttered  himself 
with  remarkable  fullness;  he  has  attempted 
and  succeeded  in  many  things.  His  influ- 
ence upon  younger  writers  has  been  very 
great.  Mr.  Owen  Wister  has  lately  ac- 
knowledged his  own  indebtedness;  Mrs. 
Wharton's  obligations  are  written  large  on 
all  her  pages.  Mr.  James  is,  to  use  a 
word  of  his  own,  immensely  provocative. 
The  range  of  his  interest  is  wide  and  his 
cultivation  in  certain  directions  great.  He 
is  not  a  scholar  in  the  sense  that  Lowell 
\vas ;  he  has  observed  life  in  shorter  perspec- 
tives; his  literary  criticisms,  which  we  may 
take  to  be  a  key  to  his  personal  interests, 
have  dealt  \vith  nearer  figures, — with  Tour- 
guenief,  Balzac  and  Stevenson.  His  paper 
on  Stevenson  remains  and  will  long  remain 
the  most  admirable  and  the  most  searching 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

thing  written  on  the  lad  in  the  velvet  jacket. 
Herein  we  find  an  instructive  and  illumina- 
tive denotement  of  Mr.  James'  own  attitude 
toward  this  trade  of  writing;  every  writer, 
he  declares,  who  respects  himself  and  his  art 
cares  greatly  for  his  phrase;  but  Stevenson, 
he  finds,  cares  more  for  life.  Mr.  James  is 
no  scorner  of  phrase  for  the  phrase's  sake 
or  of  form  for  form's  sake.  The  essays 
collected  in  "Partial  Portraits"  and  "Eng- 
lish Hours"  are  written  in  a  far  directer 
and  simpler  manner  than  his  later  tales. 
There  are  few  lean  streaks  in  Mr.  James' 
writings.  He  sees  through  and  all  around 
the  things  he  writes  about,  whether  it  be  a 
city,  a  bit  of  landscape,  a  character  of  fic- 
tion, or  an  author.  When  a  subject  takes 
hold  of  him  the  aroused  thoughts  tumble 
about  in  tumultuous  fashion;  he  is  not  a  lit- 
tle cistern  easily  emptied  but  a  great  flowing 
well.  Most  of  us  complain  that  in  later 
42 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

years  he  has  been  inarticulate,  or  obscure, 
and  often  utterly  incomprehensible.  There 
is  some  justice  in  the  charge,  and  it  can  not 
be  pretended  that  "The  Golden  Bowl"  or  the 
essays  he  has  recently  printed  on  American 
cities  are  easy  reading.  The  style  of  these 
later  writings  is  radically  different  from  that 
of  "Washington  Square,"  "Roderick  Hud- 
son" and  "The  Portrait  of  a  Lady."  But 
the  difficulties  of  this  later  manner  may  be 
accounted  for,  I  believe,  on  the  theory  that 
his  own  amazing  abundance  throws  his  pow- 
ers of  expression  into  confusion.  We  must 
admit  that  Mr.  James  often  stammers,  sput- 
ters and  sticks.  His  creative  vision  is  so 
wide  that  his  expression  is  often  unequal  to 
representing  it  in  the  familiar  symbols  of 
speech.  It  is  at  moments  of  this  sort  that  he 
leaves  us  to  stumble  in  a  dark  stair-case ;  then 
suddenly  we  are  aware  of  his  leading  hand 
again,  urging  us  on,  and  down  the  hall  a  bril- 
43 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

liant  light  flashes  forth,  and  we  are  able  to 
see  things  again  with  his  eyes  as  his  expres- 
sion once  more  catches  step  with  his  ideas. 
His  power  of  phrase  is  very  great  indeed. 
Certainly  no  other  American  writer  equals 
him  in  the  knack  of  flinging  into  a  few  words 
some  positively  illuminating  idea.  A  phrase 
with  him  has  often  the  brilliancy  of  the  spot 
light  in  the  theater,  that  falls  unexpectedly 
upon  the  face  of  a  concealed  player  and  holds 
for  a  moment  the  attention  of  the  spectators. 
I  take  up  without  previous  examination  a 
paper  on  the  City  of  Washington  in  "The 
American  Scene"  and  read  this  passage: 
"Hereabouts,"  he  writes,  "beyond  doubt,  his- 
tory had  from  of  old  seemed  to  me  insistently 
seated,  and  I  remember  a  short  springtime 
of  years  ago  when  Lafayette  Square  itself, 
contiguous  to  the  Executive  Mansion,  could 
create  a  rich  sense  of  the  past  by  the  use  of 
scarce  other  witchcraft  than  its  command  of 
44 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

that  pleasant  perspective,  and  its  possession 
of  the  most  prodigious  of  all  Presidential 
effigies,  Andrew  Jackson,  as  archaic  as  a 
Xinevite  king,  prancing  and  rocking  through 
the  ages." 

He  seems,  in  this  later  manner  which  has 
been  so  much  discussed,  to  have  lost  his  con- 
•tact  with  the  old  familiar  symbols  of  feeling 
and  sense  and  to  have  resolved  the  world 
into  a  place  of  sublimated  abstractions, 
which  he  describes  sometimes  with  a  stam- 
mering and  inadequate  tongue  and  again  in 
bursts  of  rugged  eloquence  and  with  amaz- 
ing penetration.  The  smoothness  of  the 
ordered  thought,  the  pretty  balances,  the 
march  and  swing  of  the  old  cadences  of  our 
speech  are  either  beyond  him  or  beneath  him, 
and  in  a  man  of  so  acute  and  full  a  mind 
and  with  a  sophistication  so  complete  in  all 
that  makes  for  beauty,  we  can  not  do  less 
than  subscribe  to  the  theory  that  he  knows 
45 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

what  he  is  about  and  that  his  style,  in  the 
curious  phase  to  which  he  has  brought  it, 
is  a  true  expression  of  the  oddly  oblique  lines 
and  strangely  concentric  circles  of  his  ma- 
tured mind. 

Eloquence  is,  I  have  sometimes  thought, 
the  rarest  quality  that  may  be  embraced  in 
the  essentials  of  style.  We  need  not  quibble, 
over  definitions.  "Eloquence,"  said  Dean 
Farrar,  "is  the  noble,  the  harmonious,  the 
passionate  expression  of  truths  profoundly 
realized,  or  of  emotions  intensely  felt";  and 
it  is  sufficient  for  our  purposes.  The  term 
is  applied  commonly  and  uncritically  in 
oratory.  I  have  not  myself  found  the  read- 
ing of  the  speeches  of  great  orators  profit- 
able, charmed  they  never  so  marvelously  in 
their  own  day.  The  old  school  readers 
served  us  well  in  this  particular  by  their  ad- 
mirable selections. 

Judgments  of  the  ear  and  of  the  eye  vary 
46 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

widely.  The  sentences  that  read  well  will 
as  likely  as  not  fall  flat  when  spoken,  even 
when  uttered  with  force.  The  oration  de- 
livered on  the  field  of  Gettysburg  by  Ed- 
ward Everett  is  commonly  spoken  of  in  con- 
temptuous contrast  with  Lincoln's  utterance 
on  the  same  occasion,  but  there  can  be  no 
fair  comparison  between  the  two  perform- 
ances. Everett  was  indisputably  one  of  the 
greatest  forensic  orators  of  his  time, — 
scholarly,  elegant,  impressive.  What  Lin- 
coln wrote  and  read  at  Gettysburg  was 
not  an  oration  but — to  use  Carl  Schurz's 
happy  characterization  of  it — a  sonorous  and 
beautiful  psalm.  The  familiar  story  that 
Lincoln  began  and  finished  that  address  on 
the  train  between  Washington  and  Gettys- 
burg was  denied  by  Mr.  John  G.  Nicolay, 
who  has  somewhere  written  a  most  interest- 
ing account  of  its  preparation. 

It  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  severer  test  of 
47 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

the  mind's  gift  of  expression  than  the  ex- 
temporaneous speech,  evoked  by  some  emer- 
gency and  spoken  without  premeditation. 
Such  instances  are  indeed  rare,  for  your 
orator  is,  I  find,  something  of  a  liar.  He 
likes  to  give  the  impression  of  readiness  of 
tongue  and  wit;  whereas  the  speech  he  has 
flung  off  at  some  crisis  of  a  debate,  seem- 
ingly produced  on  his  feet,  may  have  been 
carried  in  his  mind  for  weeks. 

We  Americans  have  long  been  accustomed 
to  florid  style  of  public  address.  I  remem- 
ber hearing  it  said  often  in  my  youth  that 
the  newspaper  was  driving  out  the  orator, 
but  I  do  not  believe  that  this  is  true,  or  that 
it  will  ever  be  true.  The  glow  and  passion 
of  the  spoken  word  must  always  hold  a  fas- 
cination for  men  that  is  not  possible  in  the 
printed  appeal.  The  general  rise  of  popular 
intelligence  raises  the  standard  somewhat; 
mere  bombast  and  spread-eagleism — the 
48 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

nimble  ascent  to  pyramidal  climaxes, — is 
less  effective  as  the  years  go  by;  but  the 
spell-binder  has  not  yet  been  superseded. 
He  may  not  always  convince,  but  he  dare  not 
be  dull,  and  he  now  and  then  rises  to  the 
level  of  a  Benjamin  Harrison,  who  combined 
the  cogent  reasoning  of  the  deeply  philosoph- 
ical lawyer  with  a  rare  art  in  marshaling  his 
facts,  and  addressed  himself  to  the  conscience 
and  the  reason  of  his  audiences. 

Terror  and  horror  are  rarely  evoked  by 
our  later  orators.  Even  the  slaughter  of  the 
innocents  in  the  Philippines  in  the  amiable 
Christian  effort  to  extend  our  beneficent 
empire  to  Asia  has  brought  forth  no  really 
striking  protest  worthy  of  the  cause.  In 
the  same  senate  chamber  where  the  hired 
counsel  of  the  railways  and  other  trust-pro- 
tecting and  subsidy-hunting  felons  subse- 
quently thwarted  the  will  of  the  American 
people,  Thomas  Corwin,  a  senator  in  con- 
49 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

gress  from  Ohio,  on  the  nth  of  February, 
1847,  thus  delivered  himself  on  the  continu- 
ation of  the  war  with  Mexico.  I  quote  this 
paragraph  from  Senator  Corwin's  speech  in 
reply  to  Senator  Cass  of  Michigan  merely  to 
illustrate  the  possibilities  of  passionate  ora- 
tory skillfully  employed: 

"Sir,  look  at  this  picture  of  want  of  room! 
With  twenty  millions  of  people,  you  have  about 
one  thousand  millions  of  acres  of  land,  inviting 
settlement  by  every  conceivable  argument,  bring- 
ing them  down  to  a  quarter  of  a  dollar  an  acre 
and  allowing  every  man  to  squat  where  he 
pleases.  But  the  Senator  from  Michigan  says 
we  will  be  two  hundred  millions  in  a  few  years 
and  we  want  room.  If  I  were  a  Mexican  I 
would  tell  you,  'Have  you  not  room  in  your  own 
country  to  bury  your  dead  men?  If  you  come 
into  mine  we  will  greet  you  with  bloody  hands 
and  welcome  you  to  hospitable  graves.'  " 

And  while  we  are  touching  upon  the  liter- 
ary style  of  statesmen  you  will  pardon  me 
50 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

for  quoting  further,  in  illustration  of  the  re- 
luctance, caution  and  restraint  that  may 
check  the  exuberance  of  personal  feeling, 
from  a  statement  made  by  Colonel  Theo- 
dore Roosevelt  in  January,  1904:  He  said: 

"In  John  Hay  I  have  a  great  Secretary  of 
State.  In  Philander  Knox  I  have  a  great  Attor- 
ney-General. In  other  Cabinet  posts  I  have 
great  men.  Elihu  Root  could  take  any  of  these 
places  and  fill  it  as  well  as  the  man  who  is  now 
there.  And,  in  addition,  he  is  what  probably 
none  of  these  gentlemen  could  be,  a  great  Secre- 
tary of  War.  Elihu  Root  is  the  ablest  man  I 
have  known  in  our  Government  service.  I  will 
go  further.  He  is  the  greatest  man  that  has  ap- 
peared in  the  public  life  of  any  country,  in  any 
position,  on  either  side  of  the  ocean,  in  my 
time." 

Criticism  offers  no  adequately  descriptive 
word  for  this  type  of  reserved,  unventurous 
statement.  Let  us  consider  whether  it  may 
not  properly  be  styled  the  imperial  theodoric. 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

Now,  in  conclusion, — if  such  disjecta 
membra  as  these  may  have  a  conclusion — 
we  have  only  skirted  the  nearer  coasts; 
what  you  have  heard  has  been  the  merest 
memorandum  of  a  somewhat  haphazard 
voyage.  No  hour's  excursion  can  carry  us 
far  in  our  quest  of  the  secret  of  style. 

If  the  wide  sea  of  literature  could  be 
charted,  then  we  all  might  find  the  ports  into 
which  the  master  mariners  have  sailed  their 
crafts;  but  we  labor  with  a  broken  oar  and 
our  log  book  is  a  tame  record  of  vain  at- 
tempts to  land  on  impossible  shores.  We 
see  many  great  ships  hull  down  on  the  hori- 
zon, but  dare  not  follow  them  far; — the 
majestic  caravel  of  George  Meredith  bear- 
ing ingots  of  pure  gold,  as  rough  and  clean 
as  Browning  lyrics;  and  close  beside  it  the 
stately  craft  of  George  Eliot, — would  that 
there  were  time  to  go  aboard  and  wrest  their 
secrets  from  them!  And  I  must  not  omit 
52 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

that  rarely  gifted  English  woman,  Mrs. 
Alice  Meynell.  Her  prose  happily  expresses 
the  delicacy  and  grace  of  an  imagination 
whose  province  lies  beyond  the  Ivory  Portal 
of  the  Realm  of  Dreams. 

Turning  inland  we  see  deploying  upon  a 
glittering  plain  an  army  with  banners,  pre- 
ceded by  a  mitered  host  chanting  in  deep 
Gregorian.  Entre  per  me!  shouts  a  charg- 
ing knight  galloping  forward  with  a  great 
clatter  of  arms  and  armor..  We  recognize 
one  of  Maurice  Hewlett's  many  inventions. 
Hewlett  manages  an  archaic  manner  ad- 
mirably; a  trifle  over-elaborate  maybe,  but 
there  is  muscle  beneath  the  embroidery. 
Afar  off  steams  the  battleship  Rudyard  Kip- 
ling, and  we  know  the  young  Admiral  for 
a  man  of  high  courage,  at  home  on  land  or 
sea,  in  the  air  above  or  in  the  waters  under 
the  .earth.  And  if  we  may  pause  for  one 
word,  we  may  say  that  the  tremendous  im- 
53 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

portance,  the  hardly  calculable  influence  of 
the  English  Bible  on  English  style  has  no- 
where in  our  generation  been  better  evi- 
denced than  in  the  writings  of  Kipling. 
Not  merely  that  he  so  often  quotes  from  the 
Bible;  not  so  much  that  biblical  phrases 
abound  in  his  pages ;  but  that  the  directness, 
the  simplicity,  the  rugged  power  of  Hebrew 
narrative  imparts  a  singular  distinction  and 
force  to  all  he  writes.  Young  writers,  in- 
tent upon  the  best  possibilities  of  our  mother 
English,  do  well  to  leave  all  that  the  great 
Greeks,  the  great  Latins,  the  great  Italians 
and  French  have  written  until  they  have 
wrought, — into  the  very  alphabet  of  mem- 
ory,— the  innumerable  lessons  and  high  ex- 
amples of  that  imperishable  text  book  of 
English  style. 

Ah,  if  it  were  a  mere  pagan  chronicle;  if 
it  were  the  least  spiritual  book  in  the  world, 
still  we  who  love  English  literature  must  go 
54 


STYLE  AND  THE  MAN 

to  it,  as  one  who  thirsteth,  to  a  familiar  and 
well-loved  spring,  longing  for  it  verily  as 
"David  longed,  and  said,  oh,  that  one  would 
give  me  drink  of  the  water  of  the  well  of 
Bethlehem,  that  is  by  the  gate!" 


THE  END 


55 


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